Page 58 of Lord of Passion

Chapter Twenty-Six

In which we Meet the Parents. And the ATF.

Nikandr…

For most of the night, I sit back and watch my family fall in love with Carolne.

It's not difficult. She seems to like everyone but me. She's warm, open and friendly. She has Mother howling over stories about weird and demanding hotel clients.

My little sister Dasha is in her sophomore year of college, and she's regaling Caroline with a very long, complicated story regarding the two boys that she's crazy about. My father's next to me and he breathes in deep. It sounds more like a growl coming from his chest

"I take it you don't approve?" I say quietly.

"Oh, they're both acceptable," he says. "However, want to date my daughter, so they should probably die."

"That seems reasonable," I say, tapping my glass to his.

She stops for a minute to catch her breath, and Caroline says, "You're tight with Violet's sisters, the twins, aren't you?"

Dasha's face brightens, "Yes! They've given me so many dating tips."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Carolyn nods, leaning in as Dasha talks about one of the guys entering "his villain era."

Mother is sitting on the other side of me, talking to Andrey. He has excused himself three times to take phone calls; from another attorney, then a judge, the third call came from a client who had just been picked up from a BDSM dungeon in downtown Manhattan. He finally returns to the table, irritably silencing his phone, putting it in his pocket.

"Do you need to go take care of something?" I ask, amused. It takes a lot to get Andrey to show any emotion.

He shrugs elegantly. "The client will be fine in lock up for a couple of hours. This is the third time I've gotten this kind of call about him and I'm losing patience."

"I didn't know you had any," Mother says, patting his arm.

Andrey and I may look alike, but he is impossible to understand. I'm told that we both have that same cold, haughty expression, but I believe I'm still human. I feel passion. I feel ambition. I feel love for my family. I'm not sure what my brother feels. He's my twin. When we were younger, we'd been close enough to feel like we shared the same thoughts once or twice.

Now, though, there doesn't seem to be anything in him but a singular, driving ambition to take over the world. Not in the entertaining, dark and dangerous way that we do through the Bratva, but through power in the legal world. There is a quiet campaign for him to accept a federal judgeship and I know he wants it.

He watches Caroline for a moment, analytically, like he's dissecting elements of her and putting them into tidy rows for examination. I've seen him do this before, deconstructing everything about someone in seconds. It's part of hisuncanny skills as an attorney. "Gregarious, outgoing," he says dispassionately. "That would be good for her career in the hospitality industry. Patient. She hasn't tried to smother Dasha yet."

Dad and I both chuckle into our drinks.

"She would be considered attractive by current standards," Andrey continues. If he was anyone else, I would kick his fucking teeth in for addressing my wife's attractiveness or lack thereof, but we know that my brother doesn't mean it any other way than clinically. "Athletic," he continues. "I'm certain she's strong." His brows draw together he watches her for another minute. Father and I are watchinghim,fascinated. Any conversation with Andrey is rare. "She's a good keeper of secrets," he says.

This sets off my old, nagging suspicion I used to feel toward her. Always part of my skeptical mindset asSovietnik."What do you mean by that?" I ask.

"Her industry requires a great deal of discretion," he says absently. "The demands and depravity of her hotel clientele are far more benign, of course, than the kind of information we collect with our sex clubs."

"Knowledge is power," I agree. That's why we have four private and - very expensive sex clubs - here in New York, another two in London and our most popular one, which is in St. Petersburg.

"She would be very good at running one of those –"

"Fuck no," I say instantly. "My bride is not running a goddamn sex club."

Father's laughing at both of us.

Andrey shrugs again. "In addition, she's already very close with all the women in the family. Intimate, really, after such ashort amount of time. The women in organized crime families are the information merchants. In some of the more barbaric organizations-"

"Like the Sicilians," Father and I say it together.

"It can be a matter of survival in their syndicate. Some women can hold the secrets, some can't. Your wife does." Andrey finishes his examination of Caroline and turns back to us.